7/1/12—Citing Iran’s nuclear ambition, America and her hushed puppies impose oil embargo on Islamic republic. Going on four years now, the global economic depression has kept oil price in check, so this embargo is meant to stop it from dropping further, if not bump it up, benefitting western oil companies. An economic sanction steers customers from an enemy to you. Though always slobbered in morality, it’s basically a trade tactic. The military cost of harassing Iran and enforcing embargo also enriches western weapon manufacturers.

Losers are poor lumpens who must drive 3 hours a day to and from work, because they can’t afford to live nearer their McJobs, and the buses crawl, if they show up. Also hard hit are nations already lamed by western banks, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, etc., because now they’re forced to buy more expensive petroleum from western oil companies.

The US is magnanimously exempting China from this embargo, however, thus sparing it “onerous financial penalties,” per New York Times, for dealing with Iran. What crap, since it’s China that owns the US financially. In any case, China will certainly benefit from this US-led sanction, since it can now get Iranian oil for less. As most Americans over, say, 21 have learnt the hard way, it’s the creditors who dictate terms, not debtors.

Who among us have been spared bank penalties or threatening phone calls from debt collectors? Raped by banks, many have lost everything. Let’s say you’re a retiree who’s paid off your mortgage, but don’t breathe easy yet, granny. With your life saving evaporated through the bank-engineered stock market crash, you’re struggling to pay property taxes, as ballooned by the bank-induced housing bubble. Behind a few hundred bucks, you can lose your home, one you’ve occupied for decades, to a bank, through a tax lien sale. Bankrupt, then steal. It’s such a classic tactic, a poor, senile, nearly blind and now homeless granny might as well be called Greece, or Argentina, or you. Who’s next?

7/10/12—At MLB’s All-Star Game, a giant flag, held up by soldiers, nearly covered the entire outfield. Stealth bomber then flew over stadium at conclusion of national anthem. No bomb was dropped on Yu Darvish, however, in spite of his being half-Iranian. Who said America is no longer the land of (fast pitch) opportunity? During 7th inning stretch, “God Bless America” was belted out instead of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” so fans and players, many foreign, had to stand up once more to salute the flag.

Beware those who constantly wave the American flag while desecrating whatever ideals it stands for. They flaunt an obscenely huge flag to hide their looting of this country, or any others they can attack from outside, or rape from inside. Defecating on the American Constitution, they flutter the American flag, and when they’re finally done with sucking us dry, they will drape a 3,794,101-square-mile flag over our half-dead bodies. The 1% that own banks, bombs and oil are loyal to no countries, and your government is the enforcement arm of that 1%.

7/11/12—Hillary Clinton has grown into her job so well, she sounds just like Condi Rice these days, and soon, perhaps Chevron will also name an oil tanker after her. As the Secretary of Guns, Banks and Oil, Clinton was in Laos to feign concerns about environmental impacts of proposed dams and, well, long ignored devastation of unexploded American bombs. During the Vietnam War, American planes dropped over 2 million tons on a tiny country of just two million souls, and smaller than Oregon. Still live cluster bomblets, as well as other red, white and blue ordnances, render 1/3 of Laotian land unusable. In 2008, 107 nations agreed to ban cluster bombs, finally, but the United States, Israel, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Brazil said to shove it. The US had just showered cluster bombs on Afghanistan and Iraq, and Israel on Lebanon.

The real reason the US is getting chummy with Communist Laos is to contain and provoke Communist China. American navy ships have already docked in neighboring Communist Vietnam. Just as the US pretends to fight terrorism while funding terrorists, in Libya and Syria as latest examples, it is now bribing some Commies, while pretending to poo-poo Communism.

Encircling rival China is the main motive, but the US also benefits from tensions and conflicts anywhere. For the US, all wars are boffo, because war is her main business. Meanwhile, it has been announced, with flags, fanfare and patriotic farts, that Team USA will be decked in made-in-China uniforms, although it’s not quite true, however, the viral rumor that Hillary has pledged to personally fix, with Super Glue, all of the bomb-shattered vessels in the Plain of Jars.

7/11/12—The Fed warns that, unless war spending is maintained and taxes on the filthy rich are kept low, defense contractors will have to lay off thousands of workers, and gross, lumpy liquidity won’t get a chance to splatter down to us miserables from the penthouse outhouses. The Fed is a cartel of mega-banks, so of course it would go to bat for war mongers, but now it even frets at having to buy too much US bonds, thus revealing, once again, that it profits by lending money, at interest, to our government, money that all of us will have to repay. Of course, it costs the Fed nothing to churn out “federal reserve notes.” If we had a sane economy and informed public, our government would print its own cash instead of always borrowing from a privately-owned, criminally parasitic Fed that “stimulates” the economy by indebting you and yours into eternity.

Though our bank-bought government won’t decouple itself from the bank vampire, private citizens can lessen their exposure to this bank beast, and starve it, by defaulting or not getting into debt in the first place. Since recent college graduates can neither find jobs nor repay life-wrecking loans, they will be at the vanguard, if only by default, um, of this strategy. As hounded outcasts, though not quite criminals, at least not yet, they will be freer to explore ways to fight back and overturn this foul system. Black marketeer by day, guerrilla by night, or maybe just another shivering person roasting a scavenged hotdog over the eternal flame of some unknown sucker, sacrificed in the still going War on Terror. Boldness and clarity will come when people realize there’s nothing left to lose.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.